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Roselain "Rosie" Blackthorn
Roselain Blackthorn, better known to most as Rosie, is a druid of some talent who still insists she's "not but a farmer's daughter from ol' Stormglen" -- when she's not busy patching up the ill and wounded and doing her best to keep her family and allies in good health. While she is virtually unknown as a writer in the outside world (and in fact even most of her family don't know about her work), her works have some repute among druids as being one of the definitive collections chronicling and detailing the ongoing work of cleansing the demonic influence in the Tainted Scar. Background Birth and Childhood Born in Stormglen Village, Gilneas, Roselain was the first and only child born to village natives and childhood sweethearts Amarinde Blackburne and Jeremiah Wyrmcrest. Her upbringing was largely unremarkable. Jeremiah and his brother Kyle inherited the Wyrmcrest family farm, while Amarinde largely made her living as a seamstress and provider of simple spellwork to the people of Stormglen. Rosie was raised in what comfort a simple farming family could provide, surrounded by love and family and encouraged to experiment with her budding talent as a harvest witch. However, being confined to the farm chafed at Jeremiah, long taken by wanderlust and an urge to provide more for his family than a simple farmer could give. When the Greymane Wall was still under construction, Jeremiah bid his goodbyes to the family, leaving his wife and young daughter under the care of his brother Kyle, and departed Gilneas to seek his fortune as a wanderer and perhaps a soldier. Unfortunately, Jeremiah never returned home. Coming of Age There came a time when little Rosie finally stopped watching the road leading out to the farm for the familiar figure of her long-lost father and devoted herself to her studies, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the arts of harvest witchery and specializing in using what magic she knew - along with a heaping helping of old home remedies and common sense - to heal the sick and wounded and help her uncle's crops and livestock flourish. One fine summer, she even experienced that landmark all teenage girls eventually do... her first love. Of course, it could never possibly have worked out. He was only in Stormglen for the summer, apprenticed to the local blacksmith, and when summer was gone he had to return to his own family. When the two got caught doing what it is that teenagers in love naturally do, there was a still widely-recounted incident in which Amarinde chased her daughter's young suitor from the farm most of the way back to town at the ever-so-threatening point of a broom. Promises were made between the young lovers, and gifts exchanged - a leather bracelet with simple stone beads that Rosie still wears to this day - but no one realistically expected the two to ever meet again. The Fall of Gilneas If there ever was any hope for the young lovers, it was dashed when the worgen, then the Forsaken and the Cataclysm, assaulted Gilneas. Amarinde, Rosie, and her uncle Kyle packed to leave Stormglen and head for what they hoped would be the relative safety of the city, only to discover that instead of running away from the trouble, they were heading straight into it. The three were separated - Amarinde, believing her daughter killed, used magic to teleport away. Kyle, fighting to his last breath to keep his promise to his brother to protect the family, was torn apart by worgen. Rosie weathered the curse, and the war that came with it, alone, until she joined the throng of refugees escaping Gilneas on Kaldorei ships. Present Day Joining the Blades Once she'd escaped Gilneas, Rosie found herself at loose ends. All she'd ever known was life on the farm. What to do now? In time, she joined an organization both loyal to old Gilneas and willing to take the fight to its enemies - the Blades of Greymane. Rosie has never been a stand-out soldier, firmly believing her place to be behind the lines attending to the wounded and keeping her comrades' bodies and spirits well and whole. Whether she was healing their wounds, making simple home-cooked food for weary Blades, or flirting and joking to keep morale up, she always had something to do. At the same time, she spent what off-time she could manage in the little Gilnean foothold of Surwich, investigating and chronicling the efforts of Marl Wormthorn to cure the damage done in the Tainted Scar. She has spent her share of time battling the demons that infest what is now the Tainted Forest, searching for ways to cure the tainted and accursed animals residing in the half-cleansed wood. Unknown to most of her associates and family, she has kept detailed records of her successes and failures, as well as what knowledge she has gleaned of the efforts of others, and the volumes of notes, anecdotes, and research are safely stored away in the Moonglade under the eyes of the Cenarion Circle. Reunions Of course, in an organization like the Blades, people get wounded frequently, sometimes catastrophically, and a medic can be called upon at any hour of the day or night to come and tend to a wounded brother-in-arms. When the leader of the Blades himself, Berenal Grayblade was wounded, and then taken ill by infection after insufficient care in a Stormwind infirmary, Rosie was called to Dalaran to tend to him. She watched over her commander, cleansing his wounds, and using a combination of druidic magic and herb-soaked bandages to nurse him back to health. As she worked feverishly over the Commander, he called Rosie by another name, one she hadn't heard since before the fall of Gilneas, and one she never expected to hear again. Amarinde, her mother, was not only alive, but was also a recent recruit to the Blades! With many tears of both joy and grief, and many embraces for both one another and the man who had brought them together again, the mother and daughter who had for so long believed one another dead were reunited. At the same time, Rosie became quite taken with Lucien Blackthorn, a handsome young soldier who came in to check on the fallen Commander - and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Rosie and Lucien became all but inseparable as the weeks and months wore on, until one night spent swapping stories of the old days in Gilneas as they sat together on the shore. As they shared stories of the people and things they'd lost, Lucien began to tell a story about a farmer's daughter who had been his first brush with love, and of the girl's mother - a fearful beast of a woman who'd chased him halfway back to town with a broom after she'd found them together. stunned, Rosie recounted her own recollection of the event, then held out the simple leather bracelet she'd kept over the intervening years, even when time, grief, and the mind-altering effects of the curse had robbed her of the young man's name. And now, he had a name again. Through the fall of Gilneas, the worgen curse, and a war that spanned all of Azeroth, Roselain and Lucien had found one another once again, and again it was (if indirectly) thanks to Berenal, to whom Rosie would likely spend the rest of her days feeling doubly indebted. Carrying On As time wears on, Rosie still protests that she's just a farmer's daughter and a simple farm witch, but as her power and training in the druidic arts have grown, her protests have worn thin and now do little to hide the fact that she is an accomplished healer of patients both humanoid and animal, as well as a key source of research into the druidic efforts to cleanse fel-tainted land. Even as she insists she's really nobody special, she must sometimes acknowledge that her expertise and experience have uniquely suited her to being one of the medics who keep the Blades alive and fighting. Across Azeroth and even Pandaria, she continues to ply her trade as an herbalist, a healer, a farmer, and even occasionally as a scribe, keeping detailed records of her travels, methods, successes, and failures, and entrusting these volumes to the care of the Circle for the use of future druids who may be able to learn from her and from the stories of others she collects as she wanders. She and her mother have moved home, to the old Wyrmcrest farm in Stormglen, which serves as a home and a base of operations for both women in their travels. Somewhere along the way, Lucien proposed, and Rosie accepted - and after much debate about dates and ceremonies, they eloped one afternoon and were married by a fellow druid. There is one thing that continued to nag at Rosie for quite some time, though she had become fairly adept at hiding just how much it bothers her: the lack of closure regarding her father. Perhaps it was that the little girl in her was still waiting for Daddy to come walking back to the farm someday, or perhaps she just didn't like not knowing. One expedition to chase down a rumor that her father was still alive ended in failure and heartbreak. Other rumors proved too ephemeral to even investigate. It wasn't until Rosie's mother was captured and tortured by Sunreavers, and a massive half-feral beast of a Bloodfang tore through the Sunreaver camp in a hurricane of blood to rescue the captive that Rosie discovered his whereabouts. Answering now to the name 'Okami' given him by a kaldorei companion, Jeremiah has only the most tenuous memories of his former life, and Rosie is doing what she can to try and restore his past to him. Appearance Once she was fully trained by the night elves in druidic shapeshifting, Rosie quickly came to prefer her worgen form to her human one. She is rarely seen in her human form outside of formal occasions or when alone with her husband. In both forms, she is slightly taller than average in height, and built like the farm girl she still claims to be - with broad, soft curves that belie the strength that exists beneath. Her hair is tinted only somewhat reddish in her worgen form, but is a deep reddish-brown in her human form. In both forms, she has grey eyes, ink-stained fingers, and tends to wear her hair semi-randomly adorned with a wild assortment of medicinal herbs and simple wildflowers, the mingled scents of which tend to linger in her wake. And in neither form does she seem to place great stock in modesty, often wearing nothing more than a simple green leather robe to protect her from the elements. Category:Worgen Category:Gilnean Category:Blades of Greymane Category:Cenarion Circle Category:Characters Category:Druids